The First Women’s World Cup Was Erased From History. Fifty Years Later, a TIFF Documentary Is Making It Right (EXCLUSIVE)

In August 1971, more than 100,000 football fans packed Mexico Citys Azteca Stadium for a historic tournament. Teams from England, France, Denmark, Argentina and Italy flew in for 21 days of matches alongside Mexicos national team, while eager sponsors lined up for a piece of the action. The players, who received a heros welcome wherever they went, might as well have been the Rolling Stones.

They were, in fact, a group of around 100 women many of them teenagers taking part in the first unofficial Womens World Cup. And just as quickly as they tasted fame, it was snatched away as the tournament was all but erased from football history.

In a new documentary premiering at the Toronto Film Festival in September, the global football event known as COPA 71 will finally get its due more than half a century later, mere months after the ninth edition of the FIFA Womens World Cup kicked off in Australia and New Zealand. The irony, of course, is that as far as FIFA is concerned, the womens games officially launched with the 1991 World Cup in China: Footballs international governing body still doesnt acknowledge the Mexico tournament.

Imagine if you played in front of 100,000 people, and youre still told, No, this didnt happen to you, says Rachel Ramsay, co-director of COPA 71. The idea that womens football did not progress because women didnt want it to is a myth thats been percolating for a long time, along with the idea that womens football was never commercial, that women didnt want to play and that women werent any good. Thats what [this film] blasts out of the water.

Produced by Sennas Victoria Gregory and directed by Ramsay and Sachin helmer James Erskine, COPA 71 opens with two-time Womens World Cup champion Brandi Chastain looking puzzled as shes shown footage of the tournament. Later, Team USA forward Alex Morgan is equally mystified when shes told about the 1971 games.

They literally had no idea, says Erskine.

COPA 71 was organized by the Italy-headquartered Federation of Independent European Female Football (FIEFF), and was set up in Mexico because it had just hosted the mens 1970 FIFA World Cup. The existing infrastructure of the Azteca stadium and enthusiastic support of local sponsors made a womens tournament not only appealing, but commercially savvy. Yet as the event came together, FIFA tried to prevent it from happening at all. While it did go ahead and proved to be a smashing success its legitimacy was undermined from the get-go, and the event failed to receive the international acclaim and attention it deserved. (FIFA was not approached to take part in the documentary beyond sharing archive of the orgs existing tournaments.)

Fast forward 50-odd years, and many of the original players are finally ready thanks to the encouragement of Ramsay and Erskine to tell their stories, beginning with the unbridled sexism they encountered growing up playing football, to their otherworldly experience in Mexico and finally the crushing realization upon returning home that no one gave a damn.

COPA 71 directors Rachel Ramsay and James Erskine. The women were very, very generous and really wanted to share their life stories, but at the same time, theyve been told for 50 years that this didnt happen, says Ramsay. You can see that and feel that. A huge part of empowering anybody is to recognize what theyve gone through and to say, Yes, this did happen and youre not mad.

Ramsay and Erskine, who previously collaborated on Prime Video series This Is Football, first got wind of the tournament in 2019 through a BBC Radio 4 interview with U.K. captain Carol Wilson. I remember James calling me and just being like, This is the perfect story, says Ramsay. I had a quick Google, but there didnt seem to be anything out there. But I thought, Surely not. Weve developed and researched so many stories like this; it cant be one that we missed.

When the world went into lockdown, the team had the time and space to carry out a deep dive for archival material. As they located the players and secured interviews, they were able to access personal items commemorating the event that many of the women had held onto. They kind of knew at the time that no one else was interested, explains Ramsay.

I remember the first time seeing some of those full-page color ads and newspaper coverage, and the photographs and stills were really mind-boggling, adds Ramsay. You still feel like the coverage of that tournament was bigger than some of the World Cup that were seeing at the moment.

Adds Erskine: We basically started out looking for snippets of VHS knocking around in someones garage and then working our way backwards. If there were cameras in shot in the footage, that presented a new lead because someone, somewhere out there, knew something about that game. All told, it took 18 months to piece together footage from a variety of sources, including broadcast archives in Italy, France and Mexico and even Super 8 footage from audience members.

There was no one big source that provided us with hours and hours of footage, says Ramsay. Theyd all been chopped up, so its not like you have all the minutes of a match to work with. You have bits and bobs from different places.

Backed from the beginning by U.K. documentary specialists Dogwoof, COPA 71 was pitched at Danish documentary forum CPH:DOX in 2022 and received extensive interest from other partners. Ultimately, the team aligned itself with Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smiths Westbrook, which had a relationship with Serena and Venus Williams from the biopic King Richard. The tennis legends quickly boarded the project as executive producers, and Serena Williams who co-owns Los Angeles football team Angel City also lent her voice to a short segment at the beginning of the film.

They really wanted to be championing the story and lending their voice to the chorus, to ensure that it could be as amplified as possible, into as many markets as possible, says Erskine.

With the Womens World Cup now almost a week in, it may be natural to wonder why the film isnt releasing widely in order to leverage momentum around the sport. That was the original intention, says Erskine. But our biggest realization when making the film was that the story was so much bigger, and we wanted to get it right.

If the film gets a bounce because the world is suddenly focused on womens soccer via the World Cup, thats great, but we made this film to be watched on any day of the week for the next 10, 20 or 30 years, he adds. We didnt make it just to be ancillary content.

Ramsay adds: Its a real boost for the film that everyone does believe that pegging it to the World Cup right now isnt necessary for a success. Thats what people see: that it does stand on its own.

Ultimately, every superhero has an origin story. And for the women of COPA 71, this is theirs.

It makes it timely and continually relevant, says Erskine. Were lucky to have this story at a time when these people are still with us. In five years time, we might be looking at a very different film.